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About the Whois databases, each to find out who is really behind a web offer. For customers investigators and many others with legitimate interests of this information are worth gold – for spammers and scammers however. In the US, the debate over one end of Whois has begun.

Over the next ten or twelve weeks there will be a flood of complaints of the Internet over the ordered and paid for, but never delivered goods. This is the Internet everyday at Christmas time, as the constant increase of other offenses: insults, stalking, questionable or illegal publications, copyright infringement, and much more. The elucidation of many of these offenses begins with a look into the Whois databases: Who actually belongs to or above the what happens here? Who is behind this or that Freemailer service – and I’m about to know the names of the perpetrators?

Interesting is the whois system through which the data collected during the registration of a Web address can be retrieved, but also for businessmen who are looking for contact to buy an address, or ordinary surfer who just want to brush off the seriousness an internet offer is increasing. Journalists can contact the operators so crazy Internet services, and private investigators identify the music industry there many a target for their copyright complaints.

Actually so Whois is a thing with multiple uses, some unpleasant, but legitimate, and not a registrar waived: Even if the German Denic can query one who is behind what Internet address. Also the Whois system is not secure against being deceived, but most of the detected there names, address and contact information are real.

And therefore, there is argue by the American consumer and privacy advocates, was the whois query also a really great tool for spammers and scam artists. On Wednesday, the Icann – something like the traffic bureau of the Internet, which defines a number of rules for international communication space – therefore discuss a proposal that aims at the end of the Whois system.

The so-called Sunset suggestion here also includes alternatives such as the formal maintaining the Whois system waiving the disclosure of personal data. Instead, such a proposal could make people who wanted to register a website, interpose an agency which could then act as contacts.

Opponents of the Whois system argue, this had grown to a time when the operators of Internet servers yet know their first names. Meanwhile, however, the requirements on data protection and the protection of privacy have increased markedly. Especially private website operators should not be forced to register something as banal as a web address of having to reveal personal information. In addition, the common Whois regulation infringes already against the privacy policies of some European countries, which were strictly defined as the relevant laws in the United States.

In Germany Web publications subject to, inter alia, an imprint obligation – which is probably next to the Falschparken one of the most broken legal obligations is likely to be at all. The Whois query is as often the only way to obtain the called-contact. If the argument that the database query large address lists could in principle allow abuse by spammers and scam artists.

Hundreds of thousands of addresses, argue the Whois opponents, one could raise so within a few hours. To this point, however, is likely to be fought vigorously at the ICANN: There is not a single case in which such a misuse of the Whois database would be documented.

More information about an Internet domain reveals a Whois query. For this you could use a standard Web browser and visit the registration server to the appropriate top-level domain, such http://www.denic.de/ for Germany – that is complex and is also predicted that the correct server for the various known domains.

The work will take you from the program whois, you may need to re-install: On openSUSE, Ubuntu and Mandriva, the tool is part of the same package.

The tool is called is simple: just enter a short whois on the domain name, such as whois tagesschau.de. Figure 1 shows the first line of the response to this request. Interesting here is especially the first entry labeled [Holder] – the “Holder” is the domain owner.

So the news website managed by the North German Radio.

Who owns the domain “tagesschau.de,” says the command “whois”.

The entries [Admin-C], [Tech-C] and [Zone-C] give evidence of contact for certain issues, namely the domain management, technical issues and the administrator of the name servers. For foreign domains, the results look different because each top-level domain can customize the information in the Whois record your own taste. Compare this example, the answers to the Whois queries for our sister journals Linux Magazine (Germany) and Linux Magazine (UK, USA): linux-magazin.de, linux-magazine.com and linux-magazine.co.uk.

The command whois knows many options, however, can differ from a Linux version to another is. Guidance as to what options you have, why is always the local man page of the tools that you accessed with man whois.